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In New York, Queens is the area with the most languages ​​spoken in the world

A place on earth is like the Tower of Babel, and it is not surprisingly the city considered the most cosmopolitan in the world:New York. The American metropolis is the place of 800 languages, and Queens, one of its 5 districts, is the space where the greatest number of them are spoken – nationally but also globally – according to the Endangered Language Alliance association. To capture this awe-inspiring reality, writer Rebecca Solnit and humanities and social sciences professor Jeremy J. Shapiro incorporated into their book Nonstop Metropolis:A New York City Atlas a very telling card, as reported by the site Business Insider . It shows the many languages ​​spoken between the neighborhoods of Astoria and Forest Hills, which represent the limits of Queens.

Widespread and rarest languages ​​

Over a distance of 8 kilometres, it is therefore possible to hear Greek, Filipino (official language in the Philippines), Russian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Indonesian, or even other less widespread languages ​​such as Chavacano (a Filipino Creole based on Spanish) and Bukhori spoken by the Jewish people of Central Asia. And taking a closer look at the map drawn up by illustrator Molly Roy – who has documented herself with local libraries and museums, we find languages ​​that speak to us much more (that pun!) as Europeans:Portuguese, Croatian, Swedish, Norwegian, Hungarian, Danish, Italian… But no French. There is, however, a regional language very local to us:Breton!

It would seem that the Big Apple is the place to be to become a real polyglot… We are very tempted by the idea of ​​a language stay!